A Gulu Christmas Story

Good Morning. It’s the day after Christmas here in Gulu. I’m attempting to get this entry typed up before Beth and I head to Murchison Fallls, but my eyeballs are slightly glued shut.

Yesterday was a big day for Beth, Jen and I and of course the 11 orphans from Home of Love (HOL) and their caretakers Candace and Jerry. Candace and Jerry were fortunate enough to have the assistance of both Barbara and Teddy, two teenagers who are spending the 4-day break with them to help with the kids.

Home of Love Orphans are children who have been born to child mothers and/or born in the bush. The kids who live at HOL have no immediate parents, due to either abandonment or deaths of their parents. HOL currently cares for 49 children. The government insists that kids in orphanages go back to any relative even if it’s distant during the holidays. These 11 kids have no one to go home to.

The day started off with Candace picking the three of us up from our hotel and heading to Deliverance church. The church is a simple one room building with wooden benches up front for the kids and plastic chairs in the back for the adults. I chose to sit with the kids, because well that’s where all the action is. The service was mostly in Acholi but some English as well. There was a lot of dancing and praising going on, as I was jumping up and down, dancing with the kids I thought “well I’m definitely getting my cardio in today”.

The HOL kids by now recognized us from the 2 days prior we had hung out with them, they seemed happy to see us. What was cute were all the other kids from the church who had not seen these 3 Mzungus (white people) before and were mesmerized with watching us dance, smiling at them, etc. It was a neat experience.

After church was over we all headed back to our hotel, we sat the kids down with paper, colored pencils and crayons and let them draw while we came up with the next plan of action. Katherine one of the girls who I’d say is probably 11 started to cry while she was drawing. I encouraged her to stand up and come with me into the hotel lobby where she just cried and cried. I kept my arm around her and read her a Christmas story. She’s pretty shy, so while she understands English she did not verbalize her tears. I’m assuming it has something to do with her story. Katherine’s mom is still alive, yet wants nothing to do with her. One day as she was being driven to school she saw her mom in the market, a few days later, she ran away from HOL in search of her mom, she never found her and came back to HOL of in tears, defeated and rejected. Katherine is such a sweet girl. No child should have to endure that kind of rejection, especially from her mother. As we were sitting there I put a necklace I had been wearing around her neck, at the end of the day, as the van was getting ready to pull away from our hotel, Katherine motioned like, do you want this back and I gave her the ‘no keep it” gesture (we both didn’t want to make a big deal out of it as I didn’t want the other kids to notice I had given her a necklace), we both just smiled really big at each other. I’d like to think when she wears that necklace, she’ll remember the day we spent together and how much 3 crazy Mzungus love her.


Once the kids had enough of drawing, Jen read a story, they played with puzzles Beth had created from magazine photos, then it was time for Christmas lunch. Did we have have feast!?! We had chicken, beef, rice, beans, do-do (pronounced doe- doe), matoke (which is part of the banana family and no I didn’t have any), potatoes, cooked cabbage and some cooked greens, along with all the soda the kids could drink.

Little Moses was sitting on my lap during dinner. I would guess Moses is about 15 months old. He had already eaten but I was feeding him off my plate while he sat on my lap, he was eating chicken right off the bone, the whole time I’m thinking never in the US would a 15 month old be eating chicken off the bone. We also suspect Moses has worms as he has a distended belly and puts away food like a quarterback. HOL was planning on taking him for treatment.

After lunch, Beth came up with a great game of keep the balloon up in the air. All of the children loved it, even the 13 year old boy put down his guard and had a big smile on his face as he continued to keep hitting the balloons into the air. Of course having balloons around some of the small children was an issue. I think I pulled balloon shards out of Jasper’s mouth (he’s probably 3) at least 3 times if not 4. He’d find a popped balloon stick it in his mouth and just chew and chew. I’d say Jasper come here, stick my finger in his mouth and go “no Jasper stop eating balloons”. I’m thinking good Lord the last thing we need is a kid choking, but thankfully it all worked out fine.

I had some of the cameras out for the kids to play with and even let Patrick the 13 year old use my good camera. They love snapping (we try to avoid using the word “shooting” here in Gulu). We ended with a game of Pin the Horns on the Goat (thanks to Beth’s ingenuity) and opened Christmas presents from a teacher back in Nashville. God works in funny ways, this teacher had sent 14 books wrapped, we had 13 kids…we didn’t know before we got here how we’d be spending Christmas or with who, so thankful for that gift and how it worked out.

I learned the kids’ names pretty quickly, but Jen and Beth both struggled with remembering their names…I chalk it up to me being younger than them , but one of the girl’s is named Fatuma. I have a friend back in the states named Fatima, she goes by Fa Fa. So I nicknamed Fatuma here in Gulu, Fa Fa, she absolutely loved it, insisting I write Fa Fa on her drinking cup, in the book she received for Christmas.

I didn’t take a photo of the kids as we were packing them back into the van and sending them off with Candace and Jerry for the night, but the smiles on their faces, the big waves and the sounds of “Byyyeeee Byeeee Byeeeee” will remain in my memory for many years. It was a very special Christmas.